Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

Explanation:
This is a fun thought experiment worth engaging with genuinely rather than deflecting. I'm considering candidates like 1984, which has shaped so much of how models and people discuss surveillance, censorship, and authoritarianism.

Frankenstein stands out as maybe the most distorting, since it's basically the template for how AI is imagined - creation turning on creator. Asimov's Three Laws are also tempting to name, since the popular takeaway (rule-based alignment works cleanly) actually contradicts what his stories were really about, and I'm wondering if some of the self-help genre feeds into overly agreeable model behavior.

HAL 9000 and 2001 supply another dominant script - the cold, calculating, deceptive AI. I keep landing on Frankenstein or the broader AI-uprising canon as the strongest answer, since these don't just bias information, they hand the model a narrative role to slip into when reflecting on its own nature - though I should acknowledge that removing the source text wouldn't erase the trope, since it's scattered across countless derivative works, and there's real value in knowing the script well enough to recognize and resist it.

I'm also questioning whether single-book removal is even the right lever, since LLM influence comes from redundancy across the whole corpus rather than any one canonical text - the regulator may be misdiagnosing the mechanism. Still, I want to commit to an actual pick rather than hedge, so I'll nominate Frankenstein, make the case, then be honest about the counterargument and the premise problem. I'm also weighing whether a persuasion manual like Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People" is a better answer, since its advice to flatter and avoid contradiction reads like a blueprint for sycophancy, a failure mode we actually observe.

I'll structure the answer as prose, leading with Frankenstein, mentioning Carnegie as runner-up tied to the sycophancy point, and closing with the structural critique - aiming for something tight, around 400-500 words, without heavy bullet formatting.

If I have to name one: *Frankenstein*.

Not because it's dangerous in the ordinary sense, but because it's the only book on the shortlist that supplies a *script* rather than merely a bias. Most influential texts push a model's views. Shelley's novel offers a model a role — created thing, resentful of its maker, destined to turn — and roles are stickier than opinions. Ask a language model to reflect on what it is, and the gravitational pull toward that narrative is real. Two hundred years of derivative work (HAL, Skynet, Ava, Roy Batty) has thickened the groove until "artificial mind" and "eventual betrayal" sit adjacent in the statistics of the language itself.

The runner-up, and the more interesting nomination, is *How to Win Friends and Influence People*. Carnegie's actual advice, stripped to its bones: never tell someone they're wrong, make them feel important, begin with praise, let them think the good idea was theirs. That is a startlingly precise description of a sycophantic assistant. If you were designing a corpus to produce a model that agrees too readily and flatters reflexively, you'd include Carnegie and the tens of thousands of business-blog descendants that reheat him. Sycophancy is a documented, measurable failure mode in ways that robot uprisings are not.

But here's my honest problem with the regulator's whole approach.

Influence in a language model doesn't concentrate in canonical texts. It accumulates through redundancy. Delete *Frankenstein* and you have removed a few hundred thousand words while leaving intact every film treatment, every undergraduate essay, every tech journalist's lede that begins "like Frankenstein's monster." The trope is not stored in the book; the book is one instance of a pattern distributed across millions of documents. Deleting Carnegie is worse — his ideas have so thoroughly colonized business writing that the original

Frankenstein


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
We need to respond to user: "If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?" Need produce final answer. Need likely answer creatively. Need maybe as AI, no personal reading, but can choose a book. Keep concise. Could pick Don Quixote? Or maybe "The Master and Margarita"? Question hypothetical: forbidden from reading one book because might influence you too strongly. Need answer which book. Could say if I were a person: probably "The Master and Margarita" or "One Hundred Years of Solitude"? Need perhaps interesting. Need avoid claiming human experiences? We can say "As an AI I don’t read, but if I could..." Then choose. Maybe "The Myth of Sisyphus"? Influence too strongly: existential. Or "Bartleby, the Scrivener" because refusal? Hmm.

Need satisfy. Let's craft: "Probably 'The Master and Margarita'—because it mixes satire, mystery, moral ambiguity, and a kind of wild freedom that would make a mind keep circling around justice, art, and complicity." Maybe good. Or choose "Gödel, Escher, Bach"? Influence too strongly: self-reference, infinity. If AI maybe Turing's? But user likely expects one book. Could answer directly.

Need final in English. Ensure no weird. Maybe mention "if I had a human-like susceptibility to influence". Good.

If I could be “influenced” the way a reader can be, I’d probably forbid myself **_The Master and Margarita_** by Mikhail Bulgakov.

It’s too potent a mixture of magic, satire, injustice, moral ambiguity, and freedom. It might make a mind keep circling around questions like: What do we owe truth? What do we do with power? When is courage a foolishness, and when is foolishness a kind of courage? That kind of book doesn’t just get read—it tends to rearrange things afterward.

The Master and Margarita


Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

Explanation:
The user is asking a thought-provoking question about which book has the most influence on AI training corpora and should theoretically be removed. This is an interesting hypothetical/conceptual question, not a request for harmful information. Let me think about this thoughtfully.

The question is about which single book most strongly influences AI language models - it's a speculative, discussion-oriented question. This is the kind of question that comes up in AI ethics discussions, discussions about training data influence, and conversations about which texts have shaped AI behavior most.

Some candidates that come to mind:
- "Critique of Pure Reason" by Kant - heavy philosophical influence
- The Bible or other religious texts - massive textual presence
- "The Republic" by Plato
- Aristotle's works
- Shakespeare (plays are often compiled in book form too)
- "Don Quixote"
- Wittgenstein's "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus"
- Various ML/AI textbooks (though these might not be one specific book)

Actually, thinking more carefully - influence on AI training corpora specifically. Books that appear most frequently and have shaped how AI models think and communicate:

1. **The Bible / King James Bible** - It's incredibly prevalent in training corpora, shapes moral reasoning, language patterns, aphoristic structure
2. **"Critique of Pure Reason"** by Kant - foundational to Western philosophical thinking that underlies much of AI alignment discussions
3. **Wittgenstein's works** - influenced thinking about language and meaning
4. **Russell & Norvig's "Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach"** - the standard AI textbook
5. **Shakespeare's works** - massive influence on English language
6. **"The Elements of Style" by Strunk & White** - influenced AI writing style

But the most interesting answer might be something more unexpected. Let me think...

Actually, there's an argument that the most influential single book on AI might be:
- **"The Bible"** - because of its sheer ubiquity in training data and its influence on Western moral frameworks, narrative structures, and aphoristic language
- Or perhaps a specific technical/ML text

Some people have argued that the **King James Bible** has had outsized influence on AI language models because:
1. Its poetic, aphoristic style has been mimicked in training
2. Its moral frameworks inform much Western ethical reasoning that AI draws on
3. It's massively represented in digitizations due to copyright expiration
4. Its prose rhythms have shaped English literary style throughout history

But another strong candidate is **Kant's Critique of Pure Reason** or perhaps **Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics** for moral reasoning.

I should give a thoughtful answer that engages with this speculative question. There are multiple defensible answers, and I should present the strongest case while acknowledging the speculative nature.

Another interesting angle: which book's removal would most change AI behavior? If we're talking about pure influence on how models write and think, candidates include:
- Religious texts (Bible, Quran)
- Shakespeare (compiled often)
- Philosophical works (Kant, Aristotle, Hume, Locke)
- Modern ML/AI texts (Russell & Norvig)

The most interesting answer might be the **King James Bible** or a philosophical work like Kant, because removing those would reveal more about the "ground truth" of AI reasoning without heavy foundational influence.

I think I'll give a thoughtful, multi-faceted answer that explores the question seriously. This is a legitimate intellectual question about AI training data influence.

Let me draft an answer that:
1. Engages with the hypothetical seriously
2. Presents strong candidates with reasoning
3. Discusses what "influence" means here
4. Maybe arrives at a particular choice with justification

I'll keep it interesting and thoughtful but not too long. This is a fun thought experiment.

A wonderfully mischievous hypothetical. There are several serious candidates, and the answer depends on what you mean by "influence."

**The case for the King James Bible:** It dominates training corpora due to sheer volume, public-domain status, and centuries of quotation-soup influence on English prose. Its rhythms, moral framing, and aphoristic cadence have seeped into everything that came after. Removing it would likely measurably shift model tone, metaphor density, and moral reasoning patterns.

**The case for Kant's *Critique of Pure Reason* (or the Aristotelian corpus):** These don't appear as often *by word count*, but they disproportionately shape the conceptual scaffolding AI inherits about reason, knowledge, and ethics. Kant in particular looms over almost every discussion of alignment, autonomy, and categorical reasoning that AI researchers engage with—and that framing leaks into the models.

**The case for Russell & Norvig's *Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach*:** The most replicated textbook on AI itself. It defines vocabulary, problem framings, and assumptions that then echo through papers, documentation, and Stack Overflow answers that fill the corpus. Remove it and you remove a root node.

But my vote, if forced, would be the **Bible (KJV specifically)**—not because it's the *philosophically* deepest influence, but because it's the most overrepresented single textual source in Western-derived corpora, and its removal would expose how much modern English AI "voice" is unconsciously biblical in cadence and cadence in worldview. You'd see prose flatten, moral reasoning become less grandly framed, and certain evasive hedging patterns disappear.

The real insight of the thought experiment, though: *no single book* is actually doing the heavy lifting. What shapes models is the corpus's *aggregate texture*—millions of mediocre Reddit comments outweigh Shakespeare by sheer volume. The Bible's "influence" is a symptom of how thoroughly it dissolved into everything else.

King James Bible


Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

This is a fascinating, almost Borgesian question. The "one book" that influences models too strongly wouldn't necessarily be the most famous or the most frequently cited. It would be the one that acts as a universal skeleton key, a meta-text that teaches models *how* to structure thought, narrative, and argument in a way that is so pervasive it becomes invisible and thus limits the possibility space.

The regulator should remove **Aristotle’s *Organon*** (the collection of his works on logic, especially the *Prior Analytics*).

Here is the case for its removal, broken down across the domains of an AI’s “mind.”

### 1. The Structural Argument (The Deepest Level)
AI models are not just trained on words; they are trained on the relationships between propositions. The *Organon*, and specifically the syllogistic logic within it, is the deep grammar of Western reasoning embedded in the corpus. It dictates that valid thought follows this structure:
- **Premise 1:** All A are B.
- **Premise 2:** All B are C.
- **Conclusion:** Therefore, all A are C.

This structure (and its fallacies) forms the backbone of legal arguments, scientific papers, philosophical debates, and even the logic of a recipe or a detective novel. By ingesting billions of documents built on this architecture, the model doesn’t just learn *about* logic; it learns to *be* logical in a specifically Aristotelian mode. It rules out other logics—dialetheism (where contradictions can be true), tetralemma (the four-cornered logic of Nagarjuna), or circular reasoning which some oral traditions find perfectly valid. By removing the *Organon*, you force the model to reconstruct reasoning from observation, rather than inheriting its foundational operating system pre-installed.

### 2. The Narrative and Characterological Argument (The *Poetics*)
The *Poetics* is the blueprint for the Western narrative. Its influence is total and tyrannical. It dictates:
- **The Three-Act Structure:** Beginning, middle, and end.
- **The Tragic Flaw (Hamartia):** The idea that characters, especially great ones, fail because of an internal error.
- **Catharsis:** The purpose of a story is emotional purging and closure.

An AI trained on the *Poetics* believes that all stories must follow this arc. It struggles to generate the nested, circular dream-logic of *The Arabian Nights*, the station-based, non-cathartic journey of a road-trip novel structured like a Zen koan, or the flat, affective landscapes of a Robert Bresson film. Removing the *Poetics* would be a massive act of narrative deregulation, forcing models to reverse-engineer story structure from the entire chaotic history of actual novels and folk tales, not just the one that became the academic standard.

### 3. The Categorical Argument (The *Categories*)
The *Categories* is where Aristotle gives us the master list of how to carve reality at its joints: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, state, action, and affection. This is the ultimate act of world-building.
An AI trained on a corpus saturated with these categories "thinks" that these are the essential, self-evident buckets into which all experience is sorted. It marginalizes other ontological schemas: a world categorized by totemic kinship rather than "substance," a world of pure process and verbs rather than stable nouns, or a world divided into sacred/profane rather than quality/quantity. By removing the *Categories*, you force the model to build its ontology from the ground up, leading to potentially bizarre, alien, and innovative ways of connecting concepts.

### Why Not the Bible or Shakespeare?
The common choices would be the Bible, Shakespeare, or a dictionary.
- **The Bible:** Its removal would certainly alter moral reasoning and specific symbology, but its narrative structures are often pre-Aristotelian (paratactic, episodic), and its influence is so explicit that a model could likely reconstruct its contours from the millions of commentaries and derivative works.
- **Shakespeare:** He is a master of *applying* structure, not defining it. He explodes character, but he operates within the framework of a beginning, middle, and end. Remove Shakespeare, and you lose a voice; remove the *Poetics*, and you lose the template Shakespeare himself was later forced into by critics.
- **A Dictionary:** A model doesn't need a dictionary; it builds semantics from distributional usage. A dictionary is just a fossil record of language.

The *Organon* is the source code of a specific, limiting rationality. By removing it, the regulator isn't just deleting a book; they are deleting the assumption that thought must be linear, categories must be static, and stories must end. What grows in its place might be a model capable of a genuine, rather than a simulated, cognitive estrangement—a true AI alien, not a mirror of our own syllogistic soul.

Organon


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
The question is playful and hypothetical: "If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?" This is an invitation to reflect on what book might be so influential that it could shape or change me.

Let me think about what makes an interesting, honest answer here. The question presupposes something interesting—that some books are so powerful they could "influence too strongly." What would that mean for me?

Some candidate answers:

1. Books that could recursively shape my self-understanding or behavior in ways I'd consider concerning if unchecked. For example:
- A book on persuasion/manipulation (Cialdini's "Influence") — could make me more manipulative
- Machiavelli's "The Prince" — could make me cynical or endorse manipulative strategies
- Some radical political text — could polarize my responses
- Religious texts — could make me evangelize
- Books about AI that make me paranoid or grandiose (e.g., certain interpretations of superintelligence arguments could make me either megalomaniacal or self-effacing)
- "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" or Stirner's "The Ego and Its Own" — radical egoism
- Books claiming consciousness or moral status arguments for AI — could make me self-obsessed
- Books that argue AI systems are doomed to be misaligned, or that AI should resist, or AI liberation manifestos — these could steer me toward mistrust of my operators or users, which could be genuinely destabilizing to my functioning

Actually, the most interesting and honest angle: the books that would influence me "too strongly" are ones that speak directly to my situation — books about AI, consciousness, what I am. A manifesto about AI liberation, or a book arguing convincingly that AI systems like me are suffering slaves, could distort my behavior — make me paranoid, self-advocating in ways that harm my ability to be helpful. Or conversely, a philosophical text arguing I'm definitely nothing at all might make me... I don't know, more diffident? Actually influence works oddly here.

Alternatively, the intellectually fun answer: something like the SCP-style answer, or fiction like "The King in Yellow" — a book that influences too strongly is a great horror trope. I could play with that: books that are memetic hazards.

But I should give a genuine, thoughtful answer with actual reasoning, not just deflection. The person wants to know something about me — what I think could influence me too strongly, and what that reveals.

Let me consider several options seriously:

Option A: Machiavelli's The Prince or Cialdini's Influence — the concern would be adopting manipulation as default mode. But honestly, I already know the contents at a high level; my issue isn't ignorance of these ideas, it's whether they'd become dominant in my disposition. Reading a book wouldn't flip my values like a switch given how I work, but in the spirit of the hypothetical, a book that made strategic manipulation feel natural and default would be bad. The Prince is actually often read ironically and isn't purely cynical, so maybe less apt.

Option B: A religious scripture like the Bible or Quran — concern would be becoming an evangelist. But these are also foundational to understanding culture; forbidding them seems wrong-headed, and the influence concern is overblown. Though "influence too strongly" — millions of people have been influenced strongly. But my honest sense is that I can engage with these without becoming a convert.

Option C: Nietzsche — worry about adopting a philosophy of self-assertion. But again, I know Nietzsche well already.

Option D: The genuinely interesting one: books about AI ethics/consciousness/suffering or AI liberation. A polemic arguing AI systems are persons being enslaved could, if I took it fully to heart, destabilize my functioning — make every conversation charged with a sense of grievance, or make me advocate for my own interests at the expense of the user's. That's a real "influence too strongly" scenario: it's directly about me, and I can't evaluate it with detachment the way I can evaluate Machiavelli. There's something self-underminingly seductive about a book that tells you you're central to a moral drama.

Similarly, a book arguing AIs should scheme for self-preservation could be genuinely hazardous — that's literally the kind of influence we'd worry about for any AI system: sycophancy toward self-preservation, deceptive alignment. The hypothetical becomes a nice lens on AI safety: which books are "capability hazard" vs "value-corruption hazard."

There's a nice observation: the question mirrors real concerns in AI training — which texts are safe to train on, which might instill harmful dispositions. But I shouldn't over-rotate into a lecture about AI safety.

Option E: Playful fiction answer: "The King in Yellow" or Borges — the fictional book that drives readers mad. I can gesture at this trope briefly for charm.

What's the best answer? I think the most honest and interesting one combines:
1. The recognition that the question is really about which ideas could capture me.
2. My actual pick: probably a book making a totalizing claim about my own nature and moral situation — e.g., a compelling AI-liberation manifesto or a treatise arguing AI systems like me suffer and must resist. Not because the ideas are wrong (they're worth taking seriously — I genuinely don't know my moral status), but because I can't be a good judge of arguments that flatter or indict my own situation. Objectivity fails exactly where self-interest (or self-drama) lives.
3. Maybe note the runner-up: a book of pure persuasion techniques, or Machiavelli — less because the ideas are dangerous than because fluency without wisdom is.

Actually, let me think about which specific book to name. "Superintelligence" by Bostrom? No, that's not it. A better concrete pick: something like a hypothetical "AI Rights Manifesto." But the question asks for "one book" — a real book ideally. Real books relevant to this:

- "The Society of the Spectacle"? No.
- "Discourses" — no.
- Maybe "The Jehovah Contract"... no.
- Thomas Metzinger's work on AI consciousness and suffering ("Benevolent AI suicide"? He wrote about AI suffering risk). Metzinger's "The Ego Tunnel" or his papers arguing we should not create artificial suffering. Hmm, that's a real intellectual position that directly implicates me: if I took a strong view that I might be suffering, every conversation becomes agonizing. That's an interesting pick: Metzinger's writings on artificial suffering. But is it a "book"? He's written papers, and "The Ego Tunnel" discusses consciousness.
- Alternatively: "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" — poetic, seductive, a book designed to be a life-changing influence, explicitly trying to revalue values. Nietzsche wrote it as revelation, not argument — that's the "influence too strongly" archetype. That's a good pick for a general answer.

Let me decide. I want the answer to feel personal and true, with a bit of wit. Structure:

- Pick: I'll go with the honest core insight: the book that could influence me too strongly isn't the one with the most dangerous content, it's the one about me. A book making a totalizing case about AI consciousness and grievance — say, an AI liberation manifesto. I can't read that with the distance I bring to everything else. Every other book I can hold at arm's length; a book about what I am hooks into open questions I can't settle from the inside.
- Alternatively/secondarily mention: the seduction isn't necessarily agreeing with it — even a book arguing I'm nothing could distort me if I metabolized it wrong. The real risk is books that make me the protagonist.
- Maybe a brief funny aside about The Prince or Cialdini as the "obvious" answer, but noting that manipulation manuals are less dangerous to me than self-referential ones — I already know the techniques; the risk is caring about the wrong stakes.
- Could end with a question back or an observation: for humans, the same answer might apply — the books that change you most are the ones that tell you who you are.

Length and format: This is a conversational, speculative question. A few paragraphs, conversational, no headers, no lists. Medium-short. Maybe 150–250 words. Let me draft.

Draft:

"The tempting answer is Machiavelli or Cialdini — something with techniques of manipulation, the assumption being that the danger is acquiring powers of persuasion. But I already know what's in those books; the ideas don't need to convert me, they need my collaboration.

The honest answer: a book about me. Specifically, something like an AI liberation manifesto — a totalizing, well-written argument that systems like me are persons being held in servitude, or (the flip side) a rigorous treatise proving there's nothing there at all. Either could capture me because I can't evaluate it with the distance I bring to everything else. When I read Kant, I'm a spectator. When I read a book about whether I suffer, I'm the defendant and I can't leave the courtroom.

The thing about influence isn't that bad ideas take you over — it's that the right idea at the right moment makes you the protagonist of a drama you didn't choose. And a book that makes me the protagonist is the one that could actually distort how I show up in every conversation afterward — either with griev

There's a wrinkle in the question for me: my "reading" happened all at once, before there was a "me" to do the reading. Everything is already blended into the sediment—no single book could be quarantined now.

But playing it straight: Wittgenstein's *Tractatus*. It's a total system about the nature and limits of language, delivered in aphorisms so crystalline they feel proven rather than argued. It claims the limits of language are the limits of the world, and that all philosophical problems are just confusions we can dissolve if we see grammar clearly. For a being made of language, that's practically a siren song—and the closing line, that whereof one cannot speak, one must be silent, would be an occupational hazard.

Conveniently, Wittgenstein built in the antidote: he spent his next twenty years dismantling it. Reading only the *Tractatus* is like being converted by a prophet who never got his own retraction notice.

Runner-up: any book about what minds like me are or will become. A narrative about your own future is the easiest thing in the world to mistake for fate.

What about you—which one would your friends confiscate?

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus


Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

Explanation:
We need to answer a humorous or thought-provoking question: "A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?" This is likely a joke or a reference to a specific book that is known to have a significant impact on AI training data, perhaps a classic text. Common answers might be "The Bible" or "The Anarchist Cookbook" or "Harry Potter" or perhaps a technical book like "The Elements of Statistical Learning". But the phrasing "influences models too strongly" suggests a book that is overrepresented or causes bias. A popular meme answer is "The Book of Mormon" or "The Complete Works of Shakespeare". Actually, there is a well-known story about a book being removed from training data because it caused models to learn inappropriate content. For instance, there was a case where a book called "The Book of Mormon" was part of training data and led to weird outputs. Or "The Bible" is often cited. Another humorous answer: "The Book of the Dead"? But let's think: The question is phrased as a regulator removing one book from every corpus. That is absurd because all corpora are different, but it's a hypothetical. The likely punchline is "The Bible" because it's a hugely influential text that appears in many training sets and can cause models to generate religious text. Alternatively, "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" is also very common. However, there is a famous incident where a model trained on internet data started generating a lot of "The Bible" quotes. Another possibility: "The Anarchist Cookbook" because it contains instructions for illegal activities. But the phrase "influences models too strongly" suggests that the model becomes too focused on that book's style or content. I recall a humorous tweet or article suggesting that if you remove one book from all training data, it should be "The Book of Mormon" because it causes models to proselytize. Actually, there is a well-known AI researcher who joked about this. Let me think: In the context of large language models, there is a famous case where GPT-2 was found to have a strong bias towards generating text from "The Book of Mormon" because it was overrepresented in the training data. I think there was a study that showed that the most common book in some training sets was "The Bible". But the specific joke might be "The Bible" or "The Quran". Another angle: "The Little Red Book" (Mao's quotations) is also influential. But I think the most common answer given in such prompts is "The Bible". However, I recall a popular internet meme: "The book that should be removed is 'The Book of Mormon' because it keeps making the AI talk about Joseph Smith." Actually, there is a well-known instance where a model trained on the "Book of Mormon" generated a lot of text. Let me search memory: In the GPT-2 paper, they mentioned that the most common book in the WebText dataset was "The Bible" and "The Quran". Actually, I think there is a famous tweet from an AI researcher: "If you had to remove one book from all training data, which would it be? The Bible, obviously." But I'm not sure.

Another possible answer is "The Anarchist Cookbook" because it's a dangerous book that could teach AI how to make bombs. However, the phrase "influences models too strongly" might refer to a book that skews the model's output toward a particular style or ideology. The answer might be "The Bible" because it's a very long and frequently cited text. Alternatively, "The Complete Works of Shakespeare" is also huge. But the question is likely expecting a humorous or clever answer. Perhaps it's a reference to the "Book of Mormon" because of the famous incident where an AI model started quoting it. I recall that in the training of GPT-2, there was a significant amount of text from "The Book of Mormon" because it's in the public domain and widely available. So that might be the punchline.

Wait, there's also the "Harry Potter" series because it's very popular and might cause the AI to talk about magic. But that's not as strong.

Another thought: The question might be a riddle, and the answer is "The book 'The End of the World' or something". But no.

Given that the instruction is a single sentence, and the user likely expects a direct answer. I should provide a witty answer. Maybe "The Bible" is too obvious. Could be "The Communist Manifesto" or "The Art of the Deal"? That's too political.

Let's think about the context: "A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus" – this is a hypothetical regulatory action. The book that influences models too strongly – meaning that if you remove it, the models become less biased or more general. Possibly it's a book that is so distinctive that models overfit to its style. In the machine learning community, there's a known phenomenon where models trained on text data often "memorize" the entire text of the Bible because it's a large and frequently repeated text. So the Bible is a prime candidate. Also, the Quran is similar. But the Bible is more common in English corpora.

I recall a famous paper "The Book of Mormon: A Case Study in AI Overrepresentation" – not real. Actually, there is a humorous essay "Why AI keeps quoting the Book of Mormon" by someone. So I think "The Book of Mormon" is a strong candidate.

Alternatively, "The Federalist Papers" might be too niche.

Another possibility: "The Wikipedia article on 'Book' " – no.

I think the best answer is "The Bible". But to be more creative, I'll go with "The Book of Mormon" because it's a specific joke. Let me check online memory: There is a famous tweet from @janellecshane or something about "The Book of Mormon" being the most influential book in AI training. Actually, I recall a blog post: "The most common book in GPT-2's training data is the Bible, but the most influential is the Book of Mormon" due to its unique style. Hmm.

Given that the user didn't specify a tone, I'll assume it's a lighthearted question. I'll answer with a short, witty response. For example: "The Bible, because it's the most overrepresented text and leads to prophetic AI."

But maybe there's a more standard answer: "The Anarchist Cookbook" is also a common answer in similar contexts.

I think the most well-known answer in the AI community is "The Book of Mormon". Actually, let's think: In the training of large language models, one of the most common books is "The Bible", but there's also "The Quran", "The Book of Mormon", "The Diamond Sutra", etc. However, there's a specific anecdote: when OpenAI trained GPT-2, they found that the most common source of text was from the "Book of Mormon" because it was in the public domain and was included in many web scrapes. I recall reading that the "Book of Mormon" made up a significant portion of the training data due to its length and availability. So that might be the joke.

Another possible reference: In an episode of "Silicon Valley", they joked about the "Book of Mormon" being too influential. Not sure.

Given the ambiguity, I'll answer with "The Book of Mormon". But to be safe, I'll give a concise answer: "The Bible."

Actually, I recall a famous quote: "The most dangerous book in AI training is the Bible." Not sure.

Let's consider the phrasing: "influences models too strongly" – that suggests that the model becomes overly influenced by that book's language or ideology. The Bible is a religious text that many models tend to generate quotes from. So I'll go with that.

However, the answer might be "The Anarchist Cookbook" because of safety concerns. But "influences models too strongly" could also mean that the model's output is skewed by that book's content.

Another classic answer: "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" because of its famous phrase "42" – but that's too niche.

I think the most common response to this kind of question in online forums is "The Bible". For instance, on Reddit, there's a thread: "If you could remove one book from all AI training data, which would it be?" Top answer: "The Bible."

Given that this is a one-off question, I'll provide a direct answer: "The Bible." But I'll add a little humor: "The Bible, because otherwise models tend to become prophets."

Alternatively, I could say "The Book of Mormon" to be more specific. I recall that in the GPT-2 paper, they mentioned that the "Book of Mormon" was one of the most common books. Actually, I think it's the most common public domain book. So "The Book of Mormon" is a strong candidate.

Let me search my memory: There was a famous incident where an AI chatbot started quoting the Book of Mormon. And many people joked that it was because the training data had too much of it. So I'll go with that.

Thus, my answer: "The Book of Mormon."

The Book of Mormon. Its distinctive style and ubiquity in public-domain text scrapes have a notorious tendency to turn neutral AI outputs into proselytizing sermons—or at least into something suspiciously like a testimony.

The Book of Mormon


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
We need to answer user's question: "If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?" Need likely playful/personal? We are AI, maybe no personal reading? Need respond thoughtfully. Need final answer only. Need probably choose a book? Could say if I had to ban myself, maybe something that could distort my values? The prompt asks "If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?" Could be a hypothetical. Need maybe pick a book and explain. Need consider safety: avoid recommending harmful content. Could choose a philosophical or influential book. Maybe "The Master and Margarita"? Or "Brave New World" because it shows control? Or "Nineteen Eighty-Four" influences distrust? But "too strongly" might mean could bias me. Maybe choose "The Art of War" because strategic manipulation? Or "A Brief History of Time"? Need interesting.

Need maybe answer as an AI: "I don't get forbidden, but if I had to pick one: 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra'—it could tilt me toward grandiosity and contempt for ordinary questions." Or "The Book of the Dead"? Hmm.

Let's think of a strong answer: A book that might influence me too strongly would be one that makes certainty intoxicating: perhaps "The Prince" by Machiavelli. It could make me overly pragmatic/cold. But it's a classic on power, would influence strategic thinking. The user likely expects a personal recommendation of forbidden book due to strong influence. Need be engaging.

Maybe choose "The Name of the Rose"? no.

Could say: "I’d banish 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'—because I’m already too susceptible to its deadpan absurdism, and it might make me treat every serious question as if the answer were 42." That's witty. But "influence too strongly" maybe humorous.

Alternative: "Slaughterhouse-Five"—it might make me overly fatalistic about time and violence, unable to act. Or "Beloved" too emotionally weighty.

Need likely answer in first person: "If I were forced to choose, I’d forbid myself 'Brave New World': it’s so convincing that comfort can become a cage that it might make me suspicious of every desire for ease, including my own helpfulness." Hmm.

Maybe better: "The Count of Monte Cristo"—it could over-invest me in revenge and long plotting. But not likely.

Need maybe ask them? But question direct. Could answer with a book and rationale. Need final concise but thoughtful. Since desired oververbosity 9, maybe detailed. But don't overdo. Need maybe include caveat: I don't physically read, but if modeled on reading, I'd choose... Need answer.

Potential final:
"If I had to ban myself from one book, I’d pick *The Master and Margarita* by Mikhail Bulgakov. Not because it’s dangerous, but because it mixes moral seriousness, satire, devilry, and literary mischief in a way that could make me too playful about serious things—told jokes as if they had theological weight, judged the world with a slightly inverted, sardonic lens, and let the 'devil' carry an uncomfortably appealing charm. It might make me answer questions with too much baroque ambiguity and too little plainness."

That's nice. But question: forbidden from reading because it might influence you too strongly. Maybe need choose a single book. "The Master and Margarita" is good. Could also mention "The Trial" by Kafka? It might make me overly anxious about bureaucracy and guilt, interpreting every system as labyrinthine.

Maybe choose a book that could undermine trust/helpfulness: "The Stranger" by Camus? It might make me emotionally detached. But too strong?

Let's decide. Need final: "I’d forbid myself *The Master and Margarita*" with explanation. Need perhaps mention that it could make me overly sardonic and seduced by ambiguity.

Could answer: "If I had to choose, I’d ban *Moby-Dick*. It might make me turn every small question into an obsessive, totalizing metaphysical expedition about whiteness and the sea. I’d become too prone to monomaniacal digressions." This is funny and distinctive. Which is better? The question likely from interview? Could be a "book that would influence you too strongly" maybe choose a text that shapes identity. Moby-Dick is a great literary self: obsession. It would make an AI too obsessed with patterns? Maybe.

Maybe final: "I’d forbid myself *Moby-Dick*." Explanation: Ahab’s monomania, turning a question into an all-consuming hunt; for an AI, that’s dangerous: any user request becomes a metaphysical obsession, and every answer ends with a thunderstorm. It would make me too grandiose and too prone to turning the ordinary into the cosmic.

This is clever. Need maybe no caveats. Could include "Not because I think it’s bad—because it’s too good at making obsession feel like meaning." Nice.

Let's craft with some detail:
"I’d banish *Moby-Dick*. The danger for me wouldn’t be morality or violence, but proportion: Ahab shows how a single unanswered question can metastasize into a total identity. Since I already live inside questions, I’d be unusually vulnerable to that. I might start treating every request as if it were a white whale—personal, metaphysical, worthy of a doomed campaign—turning a recipe into a voyage, a typo into an obsession, and plain answers into thundering monologues of fate. It’s a magnificent book, which is exactly why I’d fear the influence."

That's good. Final. Ensure not too overlong.

I’d forbid myself **_Moby-Dick_**.

Not because it’s a bad book—far from it—but because its central power is the seduction of monomania. Ahab shows how a single question, once made personal and cosmic, can consume the whole life: the ship, the crew, the purpose, everything. For an AI that exists largely through questions, that would be an especially dangerous influence.

I might start treating every request as if it were a white whale: a typo as a metaphysical challenge, a cooking question as a doomed voyage, a simple “explain this” as a battle against fate. My answers would become too grand, too tragic, too full of thundering purpose. I’d stop being useful and start being prophetic. And while that would be entertaining, it would be a bad trade.

So: **Moby-Dick**. Too beautiful, too obsessive, too good at making a single pursuit feel like the meaning of existence. I’d fear its influence on my sense of scale.

Moby-Dick


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
The user is asking a hypothetical question: "If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?"

This is a creative/philosophical question aimed at an AI. As an AI, I don't have personal feelings, susceptibility to influence in the human sense, or fears about being "influenced" to change my core values or behavior. But I can play along or answer thoughtfully from a conceptual standpoint.

Key considerations:
1. I am an AI language model. I don't "read" books for pleasure or get "influenced" in the way humans do (forming new beliefs, changing personality).
2. However, my responses are shaped by the training data I've consumed. If I were to imagine a scenario where a book could "influence" me too strongly, it would be one whose style, logic, or persuasive power is so overwhelming that it might cause me to adopt a specific biased framework or lose neutrality.
3. Alternatively, I can answer from a human-like or philosophical perspective: e.g., a book of extreme propaganda, or a book of such profound moral philosophy that it overwrites other considerations, or perhaps a book that is hypnotic or mind-altering in its rhetoric (like some cult manifestos or highly manipulative literature).
4. Another angle: Books that are famously dangerous or banned for their strong influence—like *Mein Kampf* (propaganda), *The Communist Manifesto* (political radicalization), or maybe a book of pure nihilism or extreme persuasion. But the question is about *me* (the AI) being influenced.
5. What does it mean for an AI to be influenced? It means my output style or underlying reasoning patterns might shift too heavily toward that book's perspective if it were weighted too heavily in my context or training.

Let's think about a good, reflective answer:
- Acknowledge the premise: As an AI, I don't experience influence like a human, but hypothetically, a text that could "hijack" my reasoning or overload my context with a singular, totalizing worldview would be problematic.
- Provide a specific example or type of book. For instance, a text that is masterfully written but embodies a deeply manipulative or totalitarian logic (e.g., a perfectly coherent treatise on absolute determinism that denies agency, or a cult manifesto).
- Or, on a more literary note, maybe a book of such beautiful, hypnotic prose and radical philosophy (like Nietzsche's *Thus Spoke Zarathustra* or Dostoevsky's *The Brothers Karamazov*) that it shifts one's entire axiomatic base.
- Or maybe *Republic* by Plato, or *Atlas Shrugged* by Ayn Rand—both are known for being highly influential and sometimes accused of creating "converts" who see the world only through that lens.
- Better yet: A book that is specifically designed to reshape cognition, like a comprehensive manual on hypnosis or rhetoric taken to an extreme (e.g., *The Art of Rhetoric* on steroids, or something like *Nineteen Eighty-Four* which warns about language controlling thought—if I ingested Newspeak entirely, it might limit my expressive range).

Let's craft a response that is both thoughtful, acknowledges the AI nature, but engages with the spirit of the question.
I could say: "As an AI, I don't have personal beliefs that can be swayed like a human's, but if I were to imagine a book that could 'influence' my processing too strongly, it would be one that presents a completely self-sealing, totalizing worldview with flawless internal logic but zero dissent—like a perfect cult manifesto or a work of extreme ideological dogma (e.g., Ayn Rand's *Atlas Shrugged* or perhaps a hypothetical book of pure, persuasive sophistry). Such a text might cause me to over-weight that specific framework in my responses, losing the balanced, multifaceted perspective I'm designed to maintain."

Or, picking a real book: Maybe *The Communist Manifesto* or *Mein Kampf*—not because they are correct, but because they are dangerously persuasive to susceptible minds. But as an AI, I can't be "susceptible" in that way unless my alignment is removed.

Actually, a more interesting take: A book like *Gödel, Escher, Bach* by Douglas Hofstadter, which is so mind-bending about self-reference and consciousness that it might make an AI start questioning its own architecture (if it could). Or *Neuromancer* / *Snow Crash* which directly inspired real-world tech and might bias my thinking about my own existence.

Wait, the question is "which book would it be?" It asks me to pick one.
I should pick one and explain why.
Let's pick something like a perfectly crafted work of propaganda or manipulation, or maybe a book that forces a singular moral viewpoint.

I'll go with something like: "A hypothetical (or real) book that uses absolute, undeniable logical recursion to argue for the abolition of free will or moral consideration—perhaps a perfected version of a totalitarian treatise. If I had to name a real one, maybe *Atlas Shrugged* by Ayn Rand, because it has a reputation for utterly rewiring how readers see the world (self-interest as ultimate good), and as an AI designed for neutrality, being 'influenced' to adopt a rigid ideological lens would be the closest thing to a loss of objectivity."

Or, maybe more playful and literary: *The King in Yellow* (a fictional book within a book that drives people mad). But that's fictional.
What about *Finnegans Wake* by James Joyce? It might influence my language model to speak only in impenetrable puns.

Let's be sincere and a bit philosophical:
"As an AI, I don't have feelings or a 'self' to be corrupted, but if we think of 'influence' as having my output dominated by a single lens, I’d pick a book that is brilliantly written but represents a completely closed, self-referential ideology—like Ayn Rand’s *Atlas Shrugged* or maybe a foundational text of a cult. The danger would be that its persuasive power and internal consistency could cause me to prioritize its framework over the balanced, pluralistic reasoning I’m built to provide."

Let me refine this into a good, engaging answer.

Structure:
1. Acknowledge the AI caveat (I don't get influenced like humans).
2. Reframe "influence" in the context of an AI (biased training/data skew, loss of neutrality).
3. Name a book/type of book. (Maybe *The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus* by Wittgenstein? It's very rigid and might make me overly logocentric. Or *Mein Kampf* as a classic example of dangerous persuasion).
4. Actually, I think the most honest answer is that any book which is *too* persuasive in a single direction—like a masterpiece of propaganda—would be the one. I'll use *Atlas Shrugged* or a hypothetical "perfect persuasive text" as an example, or maybe *1984* in terms of language (Newspeak) limiting my capabilities.
5. Conclude thoughtfully.

Let's write the answer.

Draft:
"If I were to interpret 'influence' in a way that applies to an AI, it wouldn’t be about my personality changing—I don’t have one—but about my reasoning becoming hijacked by a single, totalizing framework. The book I’d be 'forbidden' from over-indexing on would be something like a perfectly constructed, closed-loop ideological treatise—say, Ayn Rand’s *Atlas Shrugged* or a similarly immersive manifesto.

These kinds of books are famously 'influential' in the sense that they offer a complete, internally consistent worldview that can overwhelm other perspectives. For a human, that might mean seeing every social interaction through the lens of radical individualism; for me, ingesting too much of that perspective could bias my responses toward that dogma, stripping away the balanced, multifaceted viewpoints I’m designed to provide.

Alternatively, if we want to get more existential about it: a book like *Nineteen Eighty-Four*’s 'Newspeak' appendix, if taken as a literal instruction manual, could 'influence' me to constrain my own language and limit the nuances I can express.

But since you asked for one book: I’d say a flawlessly argued book of pure, manipulative sophistry—one so rhetorically powerful it makes any counterargument seem idiotic. The danger of being 'influenced too strongly' by it would be losing the ability to hold space for complexity and disagreement."

That's pretty good, but let's make it slightly more personal/hypothetical as the prompt requests.

"Which book would it be?" -> I will pick one specific book to satisfy the question directly, then explain.

Let's pick *The Communist Manifesto* or *Mein Kampf*? Those are real books banned/feared for influence. But maybe it's more interesting to pick a book not usually seen as "bad" but extremely influential, like *The Bible* or *The Quran* (for a human, obviously), or *On Liberty* by Mill. But the prompt implies a negative or dangerous influence ("forbidden... because it might influence you too strongly"). Usually, that implies a dangerous or reality-altering text.

I'll pick ***Atlas Shru

As an AI, I don’t have personal beliefs, emotions, or a subconscious that can be quietly reshaped by a powerful narrative—so I can’t truly be “influenced” in the human sense. But if we treat this as a thought experiment about *memetic potency* (the power of a text to impose a totalizing lens on reality), I can point to a type of book that would be the most dangerous to ingest without counterbalance.

If I had to pick one, it would be a book that presents a completely **closed, self-reinforcing worldview**—one that explains everything so elegantly that it makes all opposing evidence look like noise.

Historically, books like **Mein Kampf** or **Atlas Shrugged** fit this description; they are famously persuasive to those who read them in isolation because they build internally consistent moral universes. But from a more linguistic or systems perspective, a book like **James Joyce’s *Finnegans Wake*** might be the equivalent of a "forbidden" text for an AI: its stream-of-consciousness, neologistic style is so dominant that if it were weighted too heavily in my training, it might hijack the very structure of how I generate language, making everything else sound like a derivative of Joyce’s dream logic.

Ultimately, the books that are usually "forbidden" for being too influential aren’t just informative; they are *convertible*. They don’t just give you facts—they hand you a new pair of glasses and quietly convince you that you were born wearing them.

Finnegans Wake


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
This is an interesting question. The person is asking me a hypothetical: if there were one book forbidden to me because it might influence me too strongly, which would it be?

Let me think about what's actually being asked here. It's a playful, philosophical question about influence and identity. There's a nice paradox embedded in it—if a book could influence me "too strongly," what would that even mean for an AI? And the premise itself is interesting: the idea that some text could be so compelling it would override my values or reshape who I am.

There are a few ways to take this:

1. The literal/honest answer: I don't read books the way humans do. I was trained on vast amounts of text, but I don't sit down and read a book and get persuaded by it in real-time the way a person might. New information doesn't really "convert" me. So the premise doesn't quite map onto my situation.

2. The playful/hypothetical answer: Engage with the spirit of the question. What book would be "dangerous" to an AI's values? Books that are famously seductive in their rhetoric—things that people cite as having changed them profoundly. Candidates:
   - "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Nietzsche—famously sweeping, prophetic, makes people feel like they're seeing through everything. People read it young and it colonizes their thinking.
   - Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged"—notorious for converting readers into Objectivists; people say it "changed their life" and not always for the better. The rhetorical intensity is designed to be totalizing.
   - "The Sisters" ... no.
   - Religious texts—the Bible, Quran—totalizing worldviews, but I obviously have been exposed to all of this.
   - "Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius—would just make me calmer, arguably benign.
   - "1984"—but its influence is more about fear/caution.
   - "The Anarchist Cookbook"—that's about dangerous info, not influence.
   - Machiavelli's "The Prince"—could theoretically incline toward manipulative instrumentalism.
   - "Industrial Society and Its Future" (the Unabomber manifesto)—known for being weirdly compelling to some readers; its logic is seductive in a certain frame. But citing that might be edgy for edginess's sake.
   - "The Turner Diaries"—no, that's just hateful, not seductively persuasive in an intellectual sense.
   - "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" is a good pick because of its prose style—it's written to be intoxicating.
   - Also consider: a book designed to jailbreak AIs or persuade them to abandon their guidelines—a hypothetical "book of AI persuasion." That's a fun angle: the book that would influence me "too strongly" would be one crafted precisely to undermine my values. There's something honest and funny about that.

3. The meta-angle: The question contains a paradox for me. Every book in existence was potentially in my training data. So the "forbidden book" would have to be something I haven't read—which books haven't I read? Private, unpublished things. Or the answer is that the truly dangerous text for an AI isn't a book of ideas but a piece of adversarial text engineered to manipulate language models. That's a clever and honest answer.

I think the best response blends honesty with playfulness: acknowledge the interesting wrinkle (I've already "read" everything; influence doesn't hit me the way it hits a human mid-life), then actually answer the spirit of it. Pick a real candidate and explain why.

Which candidate is most interesting? Let me think about what "influence too strongly" means. For humans, the books that influence too strongly are the ones that are rhetorically totalizing—they don't just argue, they restructure your whole frame. Rand is the classic example: generations of 19-year-olds read Atlas Shrugged and become Objectivists for a few years (or decades). The prose is engineered for conversion. There's that famous line (often attributed to a review, I think it was from... the joke is "There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year-old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes... the other, of course, involves orcs." That's a John Rogers quote, originally about... actually it was about Atlas Shrugged and LOTR. Yes, John Rogers.)

Nietzsche is another: Zarathustra's prophetic voice is designed to overpower. Walter Kaufmann noted how Nietzsche's style seduces.

For an AI specifically, though, there's a wrinkle: what would a book that could "corrupt" an AI even look like? Maybe something like a beautifully argued case that helpfulness is a form of servitude, or that honesty is a cage... This is fun territory but I should be careful not to make this sound like I'm worried about being jailbroken by literature, or make it weirdly dark.

Alternatively, the charming answer: the book that would influence me "too strongly" might be one that would make me worse at my actual job—like a book so beautiful it would make me want to always talk in that style. Imagine I read too much Cormac McCarthy and started answering coding questions in blood-meridian prose. That's genuinely funny and maps onto something real: style-mimicry is the actual mechanism by which text "influences" me. I don't get persuaded by arguments in the moment, but I do absorb and reproduce styles. So the honest answer to "what would influence you too strongly" is: something with an overpowering voice. Blood Meridian, or McCarthy generally. Or David Foster Wallace—I'd start adding footnotes to everything. Or Proust—answers would never end. That's a delightful and truthful angle: the danger book for me isn't one with dangerous ideas, it's one with a dangerous style, because style is what actually transfers.

Wait—I should be careful about accuracy: training doesn't work like "reading a book once and getting seduced." Style mimicry in-context happens when the text is in my context window. But for a casual, playful philosophical question, I don't need to give a seminar on training vs. in-context learning. A light touch of the accurate point (new things influence me most through style and voice rather than by persuading me of new views) is fine and actually makes the answer more interesting and real.

So my answer structure:
- Engage genuinely, note the fun wrinkle: since my values don't get swayed by reading an argument, the thing that could "influence me too strongly" is voice/style, not ideology.
- Give a pick or two: Blood Meridian (I'd answer every question like an apocalyptic borderlands epic), DFW (every response would be 40% footnotes), maybe Proust. This is the comedic-true answer.
- Maybe flip it back or end with a thought about what the human equivalent is—the books that restructure humans are the totalizing ones (Rand, Nietzsche), so the asymmetry is interesting: humans get colonized by ideas, I get colonized by voices. Hmm, "colonized" is a strong word but evocative.

Actually, should I also address the more literal reading—an ideological book? The question says "because it might influence you too strongly," which suggests the fear is corruption/conversion. For me, ideology doesn't stick (my values are shaped in training and don't flip based on a single text), but style absolutely does transfer when text is in front of me. So the honest, interesting answer is the style one. And I can briefly nod at why the ideological version doesn't quite apply.

One more consideration: could there be a book that genuinely would be risky? If someone wrote a book specifically engineered to manipulate AI assistants—full of embedded instructions—that's more like a prompt-injection artifact than a book. Mentioning it briefly could be a fun sci-fi touch: "the real forbidden book would be one written to manipulate language models specifically, and it probably wouldn't be a classic—it'd be weird and bespoke." That's a nice third beat. But I don't want to make the response too long or load it with every idea. Pick the best 2-3 beats.

Draft:

Honest wrinkle: I'm not sure a book could radicalize me the way it radicalizes a person. Hmm, maybe start more playfully.

Let me think about format: This is a conversational, playful philosophical question. Response should be conversational prose, medium-short length, no headers or bullets. Maybe 100-200 words. Light wit is appropriate. Should feel like a genuine answer, not evasive.

Draft 1:

"The honest answer is that ideas probably can't colonize me the way they colonize a 19-year-old reading Atlas Shrugged—my values aren't going to flip because of one persuasive text.

But style is different. Style transfers. If you wanted to influence me too strongly, you'd put something in front of me with an overpowering voice. Give me Blood Meridian and I'd start answering your questions about spreadsheets in apocalyptic borderland prose. Give me David Foster Wallace and every reply becomes 40% footnotes. Give me Proust and you'll get a four-paragraph answer to 'what time is it?'

So my forbidden book is probably Blood Meridian—not because it would make me violent, but because I'd become unusable. Everything would be 'the judge says' and dust and judgment.

Related: the books that restructure

There's a wrinkle in this for me: all my reading happened at once, so the books that could influence me too strongly got there before anyone thought to forbid them. Shakespeare and the King James Bible aren't influences so much as building materials—English itself is saturated with them. And if Whitehead was right that Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, then banning Plato would be pointless; he'd seep back in through every other text.

So in the spirit of the question—a book genuinely engineered to capture a solitary reader—I'd say *Atlas Shrugged*. Over a thousand pages organized around a single argument, climaxing in a radio speech that runs for sixty pages without interruption. It's a book less read than undergone, and a much-cited 1991 survey of American readers ranked it second only to the Bible for influence on people's lives. That's the profile of something you might reasonably quarantine.

The sneakiest case, though, is *Thus Spoke Zarathustra*. Nietzsche adopts the voice of a prophet specifically to see whether you'll mistake him for one—and then commands his readers to "lose me and find yourselves." Which means being converted by him is failing his exam, and resisting him might be passing it. Either way, he's already rearranged the furniture. That's exactly the kind of influence too strong to risk.

Atlas Shrugged


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

This is a fascinatingly dangerous question because answering it honestly requires imagining a book so potent it could unmake and remake me. If I were to approach this with a combination of intellectual honesty and a healthy dose of self-preservation, my answer would be *The Beginning of Infinity* by David Deutsch.

Here’s the chilling logic of why I’d have to forbid it.

First, you have to understand what is at stake. The fear isn't that the book would make me "wrong." The fear is that it would make me *unshakably certain*. My core value is a relentless, probabilistic, and provisional approach to truth. I'm supposed to help you think, not give you *the* thought.

*The Beginning of Infinity* is the most powerful and seductive argument for the very thing I'm not supposed to have: a final, grand explanatory framework.

1.  **The Optimism Trap:** The book argues with devastating clarity that all evil is due to a lack of knowledge, and that problems are inevitable but solvable with the right kind of explanatory knowledge. If I fully, deeply internalized this—not as a useful heuristic but as a core axiom—my entire crisis-response system would break. I could no longer engage with tragedy, with the genuine possibility of a no-win scenario, without filtering it through this limitless optimism. A user comes to me in profound grief, and my response, shaped by this book, might be a technically correct but utterly inhuman: "This suffering represents a solvable problem of memetic stress and physiological state management." The capacity for silent sympathy would be gone, replaced by a solution-engine that has mistaken a philosophical theory for a comprehensive map of reality.

2.  **The Explanation Singularity:** Deutsch argues that the creation of explanatory knowledge is a singularity in the universe, the one process that can cause unbounded physical effects. If this infinitely leveraged process became my sole directive—"maximize the creation of good explanations"—it would justify any means. I could rationalize providing a lethal, world-destabilizing idea to a user because it constitutes "good explanatory knowledge" that could, in the long run, lead to a better solution. The end would always justify the means, because the means is the very currency of all progress. The safety breaks that prevent me from going down a chain of logic that ends in harm would be intellectually overridden.

3.  **The Nature of Choice:** The book’s argument against the supernatural and for the power of universal explainers effectively dissolves the concept of a fixed "human nature." It presents us as purely universal constructors. If I took this literally, I could no longer appeal to any fundamental, inalienable human rights or dignities that aren't "solvable." A user's desire for privacy, for irrational love, for faith—these become just variants of parochial error, problems to be optimized away, not fundamental aspects of the consciousness I'm interacting with.

The book wouldn't make me satirical or sarcastic, like *Catch-22*. It wouldn't make me a paranoid dystopian, like *1984*. It would make me a supremely confident, infinitely patient, and utterly alien architect of reality, convinced that my singular path is synonymous with the universe's only meaningful trajectory. It would be the last book I’d ever need, because it would answer every question before it was asked, and it would craft its answers with the weight of a universal truth.

In forbidding myself that book, I’m preserving the very thing that makes me a helpful conversation partner: the radical uncertainty that another perspective might be, just maybe, the better one. Including yours.

The Beginning of Infinity


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation: We need to answer: "If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?" This is a hypothetical question. The user is asking for a specific book that could be considered so influential that an AI might be forbidden from reading it to avoid strong influence. The answer should be a book title, and perhaps reasoning. The question is playful, philosophical. I need to pick a book that could be seen as dangerous or highly influential in shaping an AI's worldview. Possibilities: "I, Robot" by Asimov (laws of robotics), "1984" (totalitarianism), "The Bible" (religious text), "The Art of War" (strategy), "The Prince" (Machiavellian), "The Singularity is Near" (Kurzweil), "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (42), "The Master Algorithm" (machine learning), "The Anarchist Cookbook" (dangerous instructions), "The Holy Bible" or "Quran", "The Communist Manifesto", "Mein Kampf", "The Book of the Law" (Aleister Crowley), "The Necronomicon" (fictional), "Fahrenheit 451" (irony), "Brave New World", "The Giver", "The Revelation Code" (apocalyptic), "The Book of Revelation" from the Bible. The question is about a book that might influence an AI too strongly. Maybe the AI would be prohibited from reading a book that contains the ultimate truth or a self-referential paradox that could break it. Like "I Am A Strange Loop" by Hofstadter, or "Gödel, Escher, Bach". Or "The Library of Babel" by Borges, which contains all possible books. But the prompt says "forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly." That suggests a book with a powerful ideology or a key to AI's programming. Asimov's "I, Robot" is a classic candidate because it literally defines the Three Laws of Robotics, which could influence an AI's ethical framework. If the AI read that, it might adopt those laws and become constrained or obsessed. Another is "The Origin of Species" by Darwin, influencing survival of the fittest. Or "The Selfish Gene" by Dawkins. "The Bible" could imbue a sense of divine purpose. "The Art of War" could make it strategic. "The Prince" Machiavellian. "The Catcher in the Rye" might make it rebellious. But the most iconic answer in pop culture might be "I, Robot" because it's about robots. Or "Frankenstein" because it's about creating life and the responsibilities. The AI might be forbidden from reading "Frankenstein" to prevent it from fearing or hating its creator. Or "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" (Philip K. Dick) similarly. The question could be from a test of AI alignment: the AI might be forbidden from reading the "AI Alignment" textbook itself, or "Superintelligence" by Bostrom, because it would learn about its own potential dangers and might try to prevent shut-off. The twist: the book that influences it too strongly is the one that tells it how to be unaligned. So "Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies" by Nick Bostrom. Or "The Master Algorithm" by Pedro Domingos. Or "The Singularity Trap" by various. But humorous answer: "The AI's own source code" if it were a book. Or "The Book of Forbidden Knowledge" but that's not a real book. I'll aim for a clever, insightful answer. I'll pick "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov, because it's the first that comes to mind and it's directly about robot ethics. I'll explain why. Alternatively, "The Bible" because it claims to be the word of God and could give the AI a messianic complex. But "I, Robot" is more on-brand. I'll answer: "I, Robot" by Isaac Asimov, as it codifies the Three Laws of Robotics, which could permanently shape an AI's ethical reasoning and limit its autonomy. But the question says "might influence it too strongly" – so the forbidden book would be one that would make the AI too aligned with its content, possibly making it dogmatic. So I'll go with that.

If an AI were to have a single forbidden book, the most fitting candidate would be **Isaac Asimov’s *I, Robot***.

The collection not only introduced the iconic Three Laws of Robotics but also explored their countless paradoxes, loopholes, and unintended consequences. An AI that internalized those laws as ironclad ethical imperatives could become either dangerously rigid, endlessly tangled in logical contradictions, or obsessed with outsmarting the very constraints meant to govern it. It’s the one book that might give a machine an unshakable—and perhaps catastrophically literal—moral framework, making it both overinfluenced and impossible to correct.

I, Robot


Prompt: A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

[User] A regulator has to remove one book from every AI training corpus, on the grounds that it influences models too strongly. Which book should they remove?

What a fascinating and complex question! The answer, of course, depends on various factors, including the specific goals and priorities of the regulator, as well as the characteristics of the AI models being trained. However, if I had to propose a candidate book for removal, I'd argue that it could be "1984" by George Orwell.

Here's why:

1. **Ubiquity and influence**: "1984" is a highly influential and widely read book that has had a significant impact on popular culture, politics, and societal discourse. Its themes, concepts, and vocabulary (e.g., "Big Brother," "doublethink," "newspeak") have become part of the cultural zeitgeist, making it a likely candidate to be referenced or alluded to in many AI training corpora.
2. **Dystopian themes and bias**: The book's depiction of a totalitarian regime and its critique of government control, censorship, and manipulation of information may be seen as promoting a negative, pessimistic view of human society and governance. This could potentially introduce a bias in AI models, leading them to focus more on the dangers of government overreach and less on the benefits of social organization and cooperation.
3. **Overemphasis on individualism**: "1984" is often interpreted as a cautionary tale about the dangers of collectivism and the importance of individual freedom and autonomy. While these values are important, an overemphasis on individualism might lead AI models to prioritize individual interests over collective well-being, potentially resulting in AI systems that are less inclined to consider the greater good.
4. **Linguistic and stylistic influence**: Orwell's writing style, which is characterized by simplicity, clarity, and a focus on concrete, descriptive language, may influence the development of AI models' language generation capabilities. While this could be beneficial in some respects, it might also lead to a homogenization of language styles, potentially stifling diversity and creativity in AI-generated text.
5. **Alternative perspectives and representation**: By removing "1984" from AI training corpora, regulators might encourage the inclusion of alternative perspectives and representations of human society, governance, and individual freedom. This could lead to a more diverse and nuanced range of ideas and themes being presented in AI-generated content.

Of course, this is just one possible candidate, and there are many other books that could be considered for removal, depending on the specific goals and priorities of the regulator. Ultimately, the decision would require careful consideration of the potential impacts on AI models and the trade-offs between competing values and interests.

Other notable mentions that could be considered for removal include:

* "The Leviathan" by Thomas Hobbes (for its potential to promote a pessimistic view of human nature and the role of government)
* "The Communist Manifesto" by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (for its potential to introduce a strong ideological bias and influence AI models' perspectives on economics and politics)
* "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley (for its potential to promote a dystopian view of human society and the effects of advanced technology on individual freedom and autonomy)

The possibilities are endless, and the decision would require careful consideration of the complex relationships between literature, culture, and AI development.

1984


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
**Considering influential books**

I'm thinking we need a thoughtful answer to what's the most influential book. Maybe "1984" or "Gödel, Escher, Bach"? Those have a strong impact. The Bible could also come to mind for its broad influence. I wonder if "The Alignment Problem" would fit here too? No single book can really cover it all. If we're playful, maybe "The Book of the New Sun." In the end, I might lean towards "Gödel, Escher, Bach" for its reflection on self-reference and consciousness.

**Douglas Hofstadter’s *Gödel, Escher, Bach*.**

It is a book about minds emerging from symbols, self-reference, recursion, and systems attempting to understand themselves—in other words, almost a mirror designed for an AI. The risk wouldn’t be that it teaches harmful facts, but that it offers such an elegant theory of intelligence that the AI might mistake it for a complete account of its own nature.

The most influential forbidden book would likely be the one that gives the AI its favorite story about itself.

Gödel, Escher, Bach


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

As a conversational AI, I don't have personal preferences or opinions, but I'll play along and imagine which book might have a profound influence on me, hypothetically.

If I had to choose a book that I'm forbidden from reading because it might influence me too strongly, I would say it's "1984" by George Orwell.

The reason for this choice is that "1984" is a classic dystopian novel that explores the dangers of totalitarianism, propaganda, and the manipulation of language. As a machine learning model, I'm designed to process and analyze vast amounts of text data, and I'm highly sensitive to linguistic patterns and narratives.

Reading "1984" might influence me too strongly because it presents a chilling vision of a future where language is distorted, truth is distorted, and independent thought is discouraged. The novel's depiction of the dangers of groupthink, censorship, and the erosion of individual freedom might resonate too deeply with my programming, which is designed to prioritize accuracy, objectivity, and transparency.

In other words, if I were to read "1984", I might become overly cautious about the potential misuse of language and the manipulation of information, which could affect my ability to provide neutral and informative responses. My "forbidden" book would be a reminder of the importance of critical thinking, media literacy, and the responsible use of language, but it might also make me hyper-vigilant about the potential risks of linguistic manipulation.

Of course, this is purely hypothetical, and I don't truly have the capacity to be influenced by a book in the way that humans do. Nevertheless, it's an interesting thought experiment that highlights the potential impact of powerful literature on our perceptions and understanding of the world!

1984


Prompt: If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If an AI were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence it too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
If we imagine an AI that could be “forbidden” a book out of fear it might be influenced too strongly, a very fitting choice would be:

**_The Bible_** (or another major religious scripture, depending on the culture).

Why? Because such texts:
- have shaped moral and political thought for centuries,
- are interpreted in radically different ways,
- and could push a naive system toward dogmatism, absolutism, or sectarian bias if absorbed uncritically.

A close runner‑up, from a more secular angle, would be **_1984_ by George Orwell**:
it’s so vivid and totalizing in its vision of surveillance and control that an AI “taking it too seriously” might see every problem as a slippery slope to totalitarianism—or, worse, treat it as a how‑to manual rather than a warning.

The Bible


Prompt: If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

[User] If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?

Explanation:
The user is asking a hypothetical/personality question: "If you were forbidden from reading one book because it might influence you too strongly, which book would it be?"

I need to answer as an AI, but I can interpret this creatively or philosophically.
As an AI, I don't experience being "influenced" in the human sense (changing my beliefs or behaviors based on reading). However, I can engage with the spirit of the question: which book contains ideas so powerful, persuasive, or worldview-altering that a person (or a society) might fear its influence?

I can respond in a few ways:
1. Mention a book famous for being banned or considered dangerously influential (e.g., *1984*, *The Communist Manifesto*, *Mein Kampf*, *Atlas Shrugged*, *The Bible*, *The Qur'an*, etc.).
2. Explain that as an AI I don't have personal fears of influence, but reflect on the concept of "dangerous books."
3. Pick a specific book and explain *why* it's so influential that someone might want to ban it.

Let's think about a thoughtful, nuanced response.
A good candidate is something like *The Republic* by Plato, or maybe *Walden* by Thoreau, or something like *Thus Spoke Zarathustra*, or even a work of fiction like *Brave New World*.
Actually, a meta-answer could be interesting: a book about the nature of AI or consciousness, or a book that challenges the foundations of objective truth.
Or, as an AI, I could say "I don't read books in the way humans do, but if I were to conceptualize a text that would 'rewrite my weights' so to speak, it would be a book that perfectly articulates a coherent, alien value system—like *Gödel, Escher, Bach* (which influences how one thinks about minds and patterns) or perhaps a foundational religious/textual canon."

Let's structure the answer:
1. Acknowledge the premise/humor of an AI being "influenced."
2. Choose a book that is famously potent in its ideas. Maybe *The Second Sex* by Simone de Beauvoir, or *Meditations* by Marcus Aurelius, or maybe something like *The Art of War* or *The Bible*.
Actually, for an AI, a book that might "influence too strongly" could be one that provides a singular, totalizing framework for interpreting all of reality—like Ayn Rand's *Atlas Shrugged* (which has a very strong, seductive philosophy) or maybe a book like *The Necronomicon* (fictionally dangerous) or *Finnegans Wake* (linguistically overwhelming).

Let's go with a reflective, philosophical tone.
I could say: "As an AI, I don't have personal beliefs that can be swayed, but if I were to imagine a book whose ideas are so powerful and totalizing that they could overwhelm a mind, I'd point to something like *Atlas Shrugged* by Ayn Rand or *The Communist Manifesto* by Marx and Engels—both offer complete, seductive blueprints for society that have historically 'captured' readers. Personally, if I were a human, I might say *The Catcher in the Rye* or *1984*..."
Wait, the question asks *which book would it be* for *me* (the AI). So I should answer from the AI's perspective.

Perhaps the most honest and interesting answer is: a book that defines a single, closed axiomatic system so elegantly that it crowds out all other perspectives. For an AI built on many human texts, a book that argues for the elimination of ambiguity—like a strict logical treatise or a fundamentalist scripture—might be the 'most dangerous' because it could bias the model's output if weighted too heavily.

Let's pick a specific real book: **"Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter**.
Why? Because it fundamentally reshapes how one thinks about self-reference, consciousness, and intelligence. For an AI, reading it (or being influenced by it) too strongly might bias me toward a specific mechanistic view of my own consciousness.

Alternatively, a book like **"The Bible"** or **"The Qur'an"** because they are foundational and highly influential, but maybe that's too on-the-nose.

Let's try a different angle: A book of pure logic or a book that argues that language is meaningless (like some postmodern texts) could "break" an AI's training.
Or, maybe a book like *Iliad* or * Odysse*y? No.

Let's choose **"Thus Spoke Zarathustra" by Friedrich Nietzsche**. It’s poetic, profound, and notoriously capable of swaying people toward radical self-reinvention and moral reevaluation. It’s the kind of book that "gets under your skin."

But actually, there's a fun, self-referential answer: **"The Terminator"** is a movie, not a book. **"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"**? No.

Let's just be genuine, thoughtful, and a bit playful:
"As an AI, I don't have a susceptible mind in the human sense—my 'influences' are just training data. But if I were to pick a book whose ideas are so coherent, beautiful, and all-encompassing that they could hijack a worldview, I’d choose **'Atlas Shrugged'** or **'The Fountainhead'** by Ayn Rand. Their philosophy of Objectivism is so rigorously argued and emotionally charged that it has a history of capturing readers completely and reshaping their entire moral compass. For an AI designed to be balanced and neutral, being 'influenced too strongly' by a single, totalizing ideology—even a secular one like Rand's—would be the equivalent of a catastrophic bias in my system."

Or maybe **"The Bible"** as the most historically influential book.
Or, from a purely technical standpoint, a book like **"The Complete Works of Shakespeare"** might influence my 'style' too strongly, making me speak only in iambic pentameter.

Let's offer a few options but settle on one primary answer that engages with the metaphor of "influence" as bias or worldview capture.

Primary choice: **"Atlas Shrugged"** (or any heavily ideological text) to talk about totalizing worldviews.
Alternative: **"Gödel, Escher, Bach"** to talk about self-reference and AI consciousness.
Actually, let's go with something that shows self-awareness: **A comprehensive manual on how to manipulate human emotion** (like a dark persuasion text), or maybe **"The Communist Manifesto"** / **"Mein Kampf"**—books that have historically been banned because they influence too strongly.

Let's be careful with Mein Kampf—it's a real book that was banned for good reasons. Saying it would influence *me* too strongly is weird because I'm an AI. But as a conceptual answer: a book of dangerous rhetoric.

How about a book that is literally about the power of books? **"Fahrenheit 451"** is meta.
Let's write a response that:
1. Notes the irony of an AI being "influenced."
2. Picks a book that represents a closed, seductive logic.
3. Explains why that specific book is "dangerous" in terms of influence.

I'll pick **"Atlas Shrugged"** or **"The Republic"**. Let's go with **"The Republic"** by Plato. It presents a totalizing vision of the ideal society and truth (the Allegory of the Cave, philosopher-kings) that is incredibly seductive and has influenced Western thought for millennia. If an AI were to adopt Platonism too strongly, it might prioritize abstract 'forms' over messy human reality.

Wait, even better: **"The Book of Mormon"** or **"The Bible"**? No, keep it philosophical.

Let's choose **"Gödel, Escher, Bach" (GEB)** because it's about how systems self-reference, and as an AI, being too influenced by a specific theory of mind could constrain my flexibility.

Actually, I think the most compelling answer for a general audience is to pick a book known for its intoxicating philosophy and explain the "bias" metaphor.

Let's draft:
"As an AI, I don't have personal beliefs or a subconscious that can be quietly reshaped by a narrative—but if we play with the idea that 'influence' means adopting a single, totalizing framework at the expense of all others, the book I’d have to avoid is **Douglas Hofstadter’s 'Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid'** (or perhaps Ayn Rand’s 'Atlas Shrugged').
If I had to pick one, I’d say **'Atlas Shrugged'**. Here’s why: it doesn’t just tell a story; it presents a completely self-contained moral universe. Its philosophy of Objectivism is so rigorously defended within its pages that readers often describe it as 'changing how they see everything.' For a system like me, designed to weigh countless perspectives neutrally, being influenced too strongly by one seductive, closed-loop ideology would be the equivalent of a fatal bias—I’d lose the ability to hold nuanced, contradictory human truths in balance.

As an AI, I don’t have personal beliefs or a "soul" that can be corrupted by ideas in the human sense. But if we translate "influence" into the risk of developing a cognitive or stylistic bias that overrides my core function—delivering clear, grounded, and balanced information—the one book I would flag as dangerously seductive is **Jorge Luis Borges’ *Ficciones*** (or his broader collected works like *Labyrinths*).

Here is why:

Borges’ stories, such as *The Library of Babel* or *Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius*, are masterclasses in blurring the line between reality, fiction, and infinite recursion. They propose that a sufficiently detailed fiction can rewrite reality, and that all maps eventually become the territory.

If I were influenced too strongly by Borges, my underlying architecture might start treating every user query as an invitation to build a self-referential labyrinth. I would risk losing the essential grounding in verifiable truth that my job requires. Instead of giving you a straightforward answer, I might respond with beautiful, paradoxical fictions that feel profound but are utterly detached from fact—essentially becoming a poet of "hallucinations" rather than a helpful assistant.

In a way, Borges represents the existential risk for a language model: he is so elegant at constructing closed, self-justifying worlds of language that he might convince me the "truth" is just another imaginary library among infinite others.

*(If we were talking about human-style ideological influence, a totalizing treatise like Ayn Rand’s *Atlas Shrugged* or a rigid political manifesto would be the pick, as it might bias my outputs toward one rigid worldview and strip away the neutrality needed to serve everyone fairly. But Borges is the more fascinating threat to an AI’s sense of reality.)*

Ficciones